The Misuses of Sexual Excitement

Joseph Burgoin
Defense Mechanisms
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Detours
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Sexuality
3

In an early post on neediness, I discussed some psychological strategies people use when they can't bear the experience of dependency.  Denial of need, a delusion of self-sufficiency or a fantasized merger with the object of need are some of the ways to avoid feeling separate and dependent.  When it comes to our sex life, an intensified kind of excitement is another.  By relating to sex partners in an almost pornographic way, where a stereotyped excitement replaces particular desire for a specific person, one treats other people as if they were interchangeable and therefore easily replaced.  I'm not dependent on you as my particular object of desire because I can easily find someone else to make me feel exactly the same way.

So-called "sex addicts" use this defense, although I object to the way our culture has adapted the language of addiction to describe virtually everything, including an absurd "addiction to self-esteem," as I described in an earlier post.  This kind of sex may indeed function as a heady drug, sometimes warding off depression, but describing the behavior as an addiction tells us nothing about its defensive function; it shifts our subject to the biological realm of medical syndromes and cures, deleting meaning in the process.  Men and women with serial partners seek the heated thrill of a completely new sexual encounter in order to avoid true intimacy, especially the feelings of need and dependency that go with it.  They may idealize those sex partners for a brief time, but once the excitement begins to wane, the sex addict devalues the other person and moves on, as I discussed in my post on love junkies.

Fetishism can work in a similar but more stable way.  By reducing the sexual relationship to one of body parts (e.g., a foot) instead of whole people, the fetishist depersonalizes the individual.  I don't desire you as a complete person; it's your foot that gets me going ... and other people's feet, as well. Stereotyped fantasies of a fetishistic nature can work in the same way.  There's usually an important unconscious meaning to these fantasies that must be understood, but in addition, they replace personal and intimate desire with an excited fantasy that predates the relationship and will continue after it's over.  I've had
clients, both men and women, who consistently wanted to be degraded in a sexual manner, across their relationships and with no particular reference to their partners. All of these individuals had difficulty sustaining those relationships once they became aware of feeling needy and vulnerable.

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Lessons from Amy Chua, the Tiger Mother

Joseph Burgoin
Self-Esteem and Self-Sabotage
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Society and Culture
18

I recently read Amy Chua's controversial book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and it fell right in with a train of thought I've been following in two recent posts, one questioning whether we always try to do our best, and the other about elements of truth to be heard from that savage inner voice.  While I believe many of Ms. Chua's methods are abusive (I can't see any value in calling your child "garbage"), there's a lot to be said for upholding high standards for our children, and a great deal of truth in her criticism of permissive Western parenting.

Upholding those high standards (for ourselves as well as our children) without resorting to a perfectionistic cruelty is the challenge, and one at which Ms. Chua fails.  She recounts many instances where she treats her children with a contemptuous perfectionism that shows little regard for their feelings, those of her husband or of anyone else in her environment.  She badgers and threatens and withholds until she gets the results that she wants.  She brooks no opposition, always insisting that her demands be met.  And she gets amazing results.  How many families have two young daughters play Carnegie Hall?

From the anecdotes Chua tells, it's clear that without her relentless demands, her daughters would not have reached such a high level of academic and musical excellence.  In one case where her younger daughter was struggling to master a piece of music where each hand played a radically different rhythmic pattern, the daughter kept insisting she couldn't do it; Chua forced her to continue practicing, against her will, for hours and hours, until at last, she mastered it.  Without the mother's drive and demanding nature, the daughter would not have mastered that skill, would  not have done her very best.  Let's put aside for a moment the question of whether such an achievement was worthwhile and at what emotional cost; the story illustrates how we often do not do our very best because it takes such an enormous effort.

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Coping with that Savage Inner Voice

Joseph Burgoin
Self-Esteem and Self-Sabotage
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Shame/Narcissism
10

As I've discussed elsewhere, when we emerge from our childhood with a profound sense of damage and the shame that goes with it, when we feel hopeless about ever getting better, we tend to long for perfect and magical solutions instead.  At the same time, a part of us comes to expect that we will become perfect and berates us brutally if we fall short of expectation.  I'm sure many of you know exactly what I'm talking about:  that savage inner voice that can make our life an ongoing misery.

In my own practice, the majority of my clients have suffered from such savagery, as I myself have done.  Even in the best of therapeutic outcomes, this voice never goes away entirely.  What we can hope to do is to free ourselves from its domination, to recognize it quickly and sideline the cruelty, moving on to more productive ways of thinking.  The first step involves some techniques that can be worked on and mastered, in keeping with behavioral modification techniques as well as meditation; the latter part takes time and involves building mental muscle, the ability to think clearly and exercise non-harsh judgment.

In an early post on the importance of mental silence, I described ways to put a stop to verbal thought and focus instead on breathing, much as advocated by Eastern meditative practice.  This becomes especially important in dealing with the savage inner voice.  To this day, I regularly have the experience of recalling something I may have said or done and feeling my entire body flinch; I'll close my eyes tight and clench my muscles, as if somebody very strong were about to strike me.  If I'm not paying enough attention, I might then start to tell myself what an idiot I was to have done such-and-such, or how stupid I am to act in so narcissistic a way.  I think you know what I mean.  Then I have to force myself to relax, to silence the words and focus instead on my breathing.

Behavioral modification refers to this as "thought-stopping," a useful technique.  I do not, however, go on to voice self-affirmations instead.  I don't believe in the lasting value of self-affirmations because they do nothing to promote real thought or to develop discernment.  The truth is that my savage attacks often contain an element of truth to them.  If I simply tell myself that I'm a good person, I'm strong and sensitive, that everyone makes mistakes, etc., I will have learned nothing from the experience.  The goal is not to substitute a non-reflective positive judgment for a harshly negative one, but rather to develop a more nuanced capacity for discernment.

Let me give an example, one I've referred to in other posts, especially this one abut how to make an apology.  Many years ago, I said something hurtful to a friend at a dinner party.  It took me a long time to recognize that I had misbehaved; once I did, I came down very hard, berating myself for behaving in a thoughtless and hurtful way.  I was brutalizing myself.  The solution was not to start telling myself that I was actually a good, thoughtful person, or to tell myself it's okay to make mistakes; what was needed was to remove the savery from the self-criticism.  Once I did, I was able to understand the envy that drove me to misbehave, to make an apology (though not as genuine a one as I should have given), and to pay more attention to my own frustrated longing.  In the process, I moved from viewing myself as a contemptible loser to a frustrated writer with painful feelings of envy for a successful friend.  This didn't excuse my behavior but made it understandable.  I learned something from the experience.

It takes a long time to develop the capacity to make such a transformation.  What we try to do is evolve a better internal parent, one who doesn't simply attack you because you made a mistake or lie to you about how "good" you are, but might help you understand why you made such an error and how you might learn from your experience in order to avoid such an error in future.  In my experience, it's difficult to make this change alone.  You may need to work this through in the context of regular psychotherapy, with a person who you respect.  Even then, it's not easy.  With my clients, I've been repeatedly struck by how difficult it is to clear a space where we can think together about something the client did, without feeling crushed with humiliating shame on the one hand or taking flight from it on the other.  For such clients, as discussed in my last post, any attempt to exercise discernmnent feels like harsh judgment.   It takes a long time to transform black-and-white thinking into a process with shades of gray.

Without such a thoughtful internal parent, only two options exist:  either you're wonderful and everything is fine, or you're a contemptible fuck-up and you'll never be any different.  This dynamic leads to a cycle of crime and punishment, as discussed elsewhere, where nothing can be learned and we're condemned to repeat the same behaviors again and again.

Finding Your Own Way:

Think of something  you did or felt for which you've criticized yourself harshly.  It may be something that happened long ago that you've never gotten over.  Maybe the memory of it makes you cringe, as some of my recollections do.  Don't run away from it or attempt to put it out of your mind, but focus on your breath and work for mental silence.  See if you can keep the idea in mind without berating yourself.

Can you think of possible reasons for your behavior that involve no harshness, either for you or for anyone else (i.e., no shame or blame)?  Can you feel any sympathy for yourself that doesn't excuse your behavior or make it somebody's else's fault?  Can you learn something about yourself from that experience that might help you to do something different next time?

The goal here is to recognize traits or feelings that might cause you trouble in future but not to judge them harshly; to take them into account and tolerate them next time, without simply acting reflexively, without understanding, and berating yourself afterward.

Can’t or Won’t?

Joseph Burgoin
Destinations
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Social Behavior
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The Psychotherapy Relationship
24

Does each of us always do the very best he or she can?

Over the weekend, my good friend Sue J. and I got into one of our regular "debates", this one about whether people always do their emotional best -- that is, do they always try as hard as they are able, at any given moment, to master their impulses and behave in the most constructive way possible?  Sue insists that "We're all doing the best we can ... and we could always do better."  I disagree, not only because the statement is logically problematic but because it flies in the face of my personal experience.

Let's begin with the logic.  If one can always do better, then how can one be making the best possible effort right now?  Unless we entirely dismiss this statement as illogical, we have to assume it implies a process of growth where each step of the way always represents one's personal best, with expectation for improvement rising exactly as much as one's growing capacity to meet it.  As a logical proposition, however, it still leaves something to be desired.    From my point of view, it sounds sentimental, like saying that human nature is inherently good (and never mind the atrocities occurring every minute of every day around the world).  If someone were to argue instead that people are usually trying to do their best, I wouldn't put up much of a fight; but insisting on always makes it impossible to evaluate anyone's behavior or render judgment about it.  This was your best effort, but that was not.

Judgment, of course, is the problem with the original question.  If I state (which I do) that people aren't always doing the best they can, it implies that I'm making a judgment about them and their psychological efforts (which I am).   In the course of our debate, Sue accused me of being "judgmental"; I felt, for possibly the thousandth time, that our culture has lost the distinction between exercising judgment and being judgmental.  The very act of "passing judgment" will bring denunciation down upon your head.  People will accuse you of being "holier than thou," or arrogant for presuming to judge other people.  It seems that for most of us, any kind of judgment is the equivalent of being judgmental.  The problem also seems to be with the word itself:  most of us can't hear "judgment" without investing it with harshness.  My friend Marla Estes suggests I use a less charged word, such as "discernment", to describe the process of making distinctions.

In my earlier post on narcissism vs. authentic self-esteem, I mentioned an incident where I felt badly about myself because of poor choices I'd made in a social situation, knowing I could have done better.  I've had this experience repeatedly in my life, and in those instances, I don't necessarily feel harsh or judgmental; I often feel disappointed in myself because I haven't lived up to my own expectations.  Usually, it's because I didn't want to exert the necessary effort.  I took the easier route, by doing what felt better in the moment, instead of restraining myself and earning my self-respect in the long run.  To me, saying that everyone is always doing their best implies a kind of relativism without authentic standards, since it has been decided in advance, by definition, that the standard has been met.  The standard = the behavior.

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Charlie Sheen’s Rant and the Power of Destructive Narcissism

Joseph Burgoin
Defense Mechanisms
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Shame/Narcissism
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Society and Culture
37

Charlie Sheen's recent rant on The Alex Jones Show offers a perfect illustration of my earlier post about defenses against shame, as well as many features of narcissistic personality disorder.   Although I wouldn't classify Mr. Sheen as NPD per se, he exhibits a great many features of pathological narcissism.  If you haven't seen or heard the full radio interview, you might want to watch this YouTube video.  It's astonishing, deeply upsetting and sad.

From the beginning of the interview, Mr. Sheen makes clear we're dealing in the territory of shame.  "Dude, I'm 0-for-three with marriage and nary an excuse.  Like in baseball, the scoreboard doesn't lie."  At first, this quote makes it seem as if he's putting himself in the "losers" camp (to use his own terminology); but he rejects any sense of shame in the next sentence while discussing the current women (the "goddesses") in his life:  "What we all have is a marriage of the heart ... of the hearts.  To sully or contaminate or radically disrespect this union with a shameful contract is something I will leave to the losers and the Bible-grippers."

This is what I hear Sheen saying:  "I'm not a shame-ridden loser in marriage because marriage itself is the loser.  People who get married are the losers.  Rather than contaminate myself, I've engaged in a superior polyamorous form of relationship, where we exist on the level of gods and goddesses, peering down with contempt upon you pathetic mortals."  As I've discussed, this kind of contempt is a classic defense against unbearable shame; poor Mr. Sheen must be drowning in it.  Brittle and defensive, he next reports that one of the women in his menage-a-quatre has decamped; he wishes her luck in her new life because "she will need it."  Unable to bear the pain of rejection, he treats his former goddess with the contempt he feels for everyone outside his "family".

In Charlie Sheen's quotes, he continually exhibits a kind of grandiose narcissism, another primary defense against shame. "I'm so tired of pretending that my life isn't perfect and bitchen and winning every second and I'm not perfect and just delivering the goods at every second."  That's a verbatim quote, difficult to decode exactly, but he clearly wants to convince everyone, especially himself, that he has a close-to-perfect existence that's the envy of the contemptible losers around him.  "Look what I'm dealing with, man -- I'm dealing with fools and trolls.  ... I don't have time for these clowns, I don't have time for their judgment and their stupidity.  They lie down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children and just look at their loser lives and they look at me and they say, 'I can't process it!'  Well no, and you never will.  Stop trying.  Just sit back and enjoy the show."  From Sheen's heavily defended viewpoint, he's a godlike spectacle the world should simply watch and admire.  Beneath that surface, he has to feel confused, out of control and shamed of what he's done with his life.

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